Sunday, April 13, 2014

This is my favourite illustration; two lovers escaping into the unknown. The story I had to illustrate for IQ Magazine was set in the tribal jungles of Arunachal Pradesh in the North East. In the descriptions in this story by Mamang Dai, the lovers who escaped under cover of darkness seemed very small and almost insignificant in the midst of the overwhelming natural forces around them.
When I look back at this illustration, I like the fact that there is a sense of mystery, beauty and excitement in the atmosphere that has been created. The mountains and the stars seem to envelop the lovers in a protective way as the river supports and carries them forward into the unknown.

“Love is always a voyage. All travelers whether they want to
or not are changed.

No one can travel into love and remain the same.”

~

Shams Tabrizi

Counterparts

In my body you search the mountain

for the sun buried in its forest.In your body I search for the boatadrift in the middle of the night.

~ Octavio PazMany thanks to Sajana J. for sending me this poem to accompany the illustration.

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.
~ T.S.Eliot

Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I together.But when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether man or woman- But who is that on the other side of you?
~ From The Waste Land.
T.S. Eliot

It is important to have a secret,a premonition of things unknown.It fills life with something impersonal,a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious;that things happen and can be experienced which remaininexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.
~ Carl Jung

It never ceases to amaze me how great literature and divine music gives expression to those strange, unfathomable choices and complexities of human existence.

Friday, April 11, 2014

During those
rare moments while standing before exceptional art, apart from engaging in it, one
also becomes acutely aware of the puerile virtual eye-candy that we are
constantly fed with in the name of art and illustration on the internet…How
insidiously bad art creeps into our psyches and takes root into something
malignant that eats away at our souls. Do we even know why we click the ‘like’
button anymore? Are we even aware when we comment with trite platitudes?

What first
struck me about Amrita Sher-Gill’s paintings was the integrity in her work.
When I stood among her paintings I felt as the same sense of reverence one gets
while standing under an old and ancient tree. None of the photographs of her
paintings will equal standing before her actual work, the strength and subtlety
she created with her brush.
This excellent exhibition was ‘curated’ in the true sense of the term by
Yashodhara Dalmia. One could appreciate and follow the progress and development
of Sher-Gill’s work, the elevation of her painting over the years into
simplicity and abstraction. One marvels at the sheer speed of prodigious achievements in the succession of her canvases in the span of her 28 years.

If Milton
Glaser said that the function of art is to make us aware of what is real,
Sher-Gill’s work did that for me but also much more. Her work has that quality of
truly great creation, it has depth. It is a strong and beautiful reminder that
life and art are connected and are reflections of each other. It is also a
reminder that how we live daily and what we see constantly influences who we
are and what we create.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

For Current Conservation magazine. Illustration for an article about Plant Pathogens.

There exists neither heaven nor hell,nor gods nor devils,neither spirit nor soulnor angels,nor miracles;nothing to pray to,so no need for prayer.There is only this wondrous worldand the glorious natural cycle of life and death.Examine it closelyand it should be enough.~ Dalai Lama